Nanatchka

THis is quoted with permission from the author and the publisher. and is copyrighted material. It appeared in Dance Ink, Summer 1996. The author notes that the last line is a play on the famous Arlene Croce statment, "The arabesque is real. The leg is not." ....Any dance truly worth seeing once is worth seeing again. And again. Night after night, season after season, if you can manage it. Until somewhere, somehow, a platonic version of the dance emerges from its various performances, and you have a sense of it in the true abstract, between its performances and apart from the dancers. Until you feel, for instance, the "Localeness" of Locale, and its green world, the sunshine of Aureole, the moonlight of Serenade. Until you know the dance well enough to see not just what is danced, but how....The first time you see Esplanade, you fall in love. The second time you see it, it looks the same, but different. A different phrase draws you in; a different correspondence sets itself up--variations inspired by your own caprice, or by a capricious dancer. The premise (and promise) of variability is indeed what makes live performance so thrilling and so heartbreaking. You love something, and it's gone, and you'll never see it quite that way again. But just like any life experience, your experience of the performance is there for you to call on--or to reassert itself seemingly of its own will. By an enormous and deliberate act of concentration, we may try to shut out the past and see something "fresh;" yet this is only hocus-pocus. Each Esplanade is all our Esplanades....Through the vagaries of casting, you discover what is always in a dance and what is put there by particular dancers. You see, for example, that the unbearably beautiful way that Kate Johnson kicked her feet up out of her long white skirt when David Parsons lifted her in Roses was unique to her. Cathy McCann never did it. And whoever Paul Taylor puts in that role next will wear that skirt in her own way. The lift stays the same. The legs change. copyright Nancy Dalva 1996

Ashton's The Enigma Variations, and Balanchine's Midsummer. My least favorite story ballets are MacMillan's Manon and Stevenson's Peer Gynt.

Snow White! It was just so funny.Elie Chaib was the most marvelously ridiculous prince/queen. And oh, the the seven dwarfs. Except there were five of them. So adorable. Who were they?Chris Gillis. Ken Tosti. Dave Parsons. Danny Ezralow.... ?Does anyone remember the first cast??? Was Cathy McCann Show White?Must check program, which would first have to find....Now, if only we could have live music, and also, please, revive Diggity.... Thanks for this post. It's improved everything in life, just thinking about it, and I have gone and found a 1988 program. Wow. Nightshade with Elie Chaib, Kate Johnson, Mary Cocharan, Karla Wolfwang.e, Chris Gillis, Ken Tosti, Raymond Kurshal, Linda Kent, and Cathy McCann. Hernando Cortez was in the company the, and Joan Mauricio, Susan McGuire, Francie Huber, Jeff Wadlington...Heavens, I'd almost forgotton how wonderful that decade was. I think the 1980s was a golden age in modern dance, now that I contemplate it. Not that now isn't fabulous. I'll take now. But I am glad I had then.

Yes, of course, but I don't have a prescription for beauty. I just know handsome and beautiful when I see them. The handsomest dancer I have ever seen, in any format, no gnarled oak he, is the modern dancer Rob Besserer. He happens to look the same on stage as off, but there are many instances where beauty is projected onstage, but not off. (Also, in contrast, some off stage beautiful faces don't take stage light well. )Bottom line: When people are prancing around with practially no clothes on, beauty is a significant asset.

It's a marvelous book. What amazes me most, after the brilliance, beauty and wit of the writing, this time around, is how prescient some of her commentary is. What was true when she wrote it has become even truer. As if she were writing the future.

To follow your train of thought, Mel, then at the end of Vienna, the absent partner is Balanchine....I buy it. Also, in Davidsbundtlertanze, the man is Balanchine, and the women "the wives." And what I call "meta-wives." I actually once wrote a piece in which I suggested that Balanchine's attraction to Zorina (who was actually named Brigitte) and later Von Aroldingen herarlded back to the German nanny of his childhood. This is now the wrong thread, but if someone moved Mel's last couple of posts and mine, we could have a Freud and the Ballet chat....LAW, I don't think this kind of analysis detracts from the artistic merit of the pieces, or minimizes the work.It's just interesting. I can see where you wouldn't care for it, though. Chreographers generally don't. It was anathema to "new criticism," and I avoided it for years, but in the end, it was too tempting. You can always work back to the personal, in almost anything, actually. But the fastest route to truth is fiction.

We will see. What I am wondering is if he has accepted a specific interesting offer from elsewhere. I think his letter states that he wishes to be free to make "unpopular" work. He's so intelligent. Even when I hate what he does, I never doubt that.

There is a Graham technique book by Alice Helprin. I am away from my library and cannot give you the details. You will find it helpful if you can locate it.

I'd like to gently point out that Bob Yesselman is a truly distinguished figure in dance administration (we can thank him for some great great years at Paul Taylor, among other things), and that Ellen Jacobs is the field's prima publicist (and herself an exceedingly discerning dance watcher). They serve and have served the field for decades of notable service. I sincerely doubt anyone ever fell off a chair laughing after dealing with either of them, never mind both, any more than people fall off chairs after meeting the Pope, or Madeleine Albright.

I'd like to gently point out that Bob Yesselman is a truly distinguished figure in dance administration (we can thank him for some great great years at Paul Taylor, among other things), and that Ellen Jacobs is the field's prima publicist (and herself an exceedingly discerning dance watcher). They serve and have served the field for decades of notable service. I sincerely doubt anyone ever fell off a chair laughing after dealing with either of them, never mind both, any more than people fall off chairs after meeting the Pope, or Madeleine Albright.

I think your son will love Elizabeth Streb. My sons have loved her work since they were his age. The historical material in her current concert, which I just saw, is not too heavy. It involves some voice overs and slides to cover scene changes, which are still visible--and the set up and knock down and such will be interesting to your son, too! One of these historical figures is, for nstance, Evil Knievel (sp?!), who is shown jumping is motorcycle over things. My boys vote for her as their favorite choreographer! She is very kid friendly. Have fun! (PS There is a little bit of physics mixed in, in a very amusing way. He'll learn something...)

I wonder if they could knock it off in cubic zironium and sell it on the Home Shopping Network? And I wonder what it looks like. Someone go look at it. Then we can compare it to the Van Cleef and Arpels necklace Suzanne Farrell was photographed in during the promotions for Jewels. Now that was jewelry! The Diamond Project is actually named for a person, not a gemstone. I suppose the ballet is lucky, for fundraising purposes, that her name wasn't Irene Rhinestone.

I always re-read in August. A corpse is nice, preferably on the premises of nuns, or academics. A little Rex Stout, or Ed McBain. Simenon. P.G. Wodehouse.Dorothy Sayers. Some years, Jane Austen. This year, Arlene Croce. And cookbooks, I read cookbooks. But Wodehouse is the best summer reading--the Blandings Castle stories. The sun shines, the breeze blows, the heart lifts, and the old prose improves, by association. Blitheness is all, in August.

I don't think that there is a block of space being traded--one thing for another, although that can happen. I think there is a block of space that vanished, which also happens. It's very unsettling. For instance, the dance paragraphs (larger and longer than listings) in the New Yorker got disappeared. The Performing Arts Preview of the Atlantic Monthly disappeared. Stagebill disappeared. It's very depressing.

I don't think that there is a block of space being traded--one thing for another, although that can happen. I think there is a block of space that vanished, which also happens. It's very unsettling. For instance, the dance paragraphs (larger and longer than listings) in the New Yorker got disappeared. The Performing Arts Preview of the Atlantic Monthly disappeared. Stagebill disappeared. It's very depressing.

More than you want to know: What changes most in writing from one publication to another is tone. You've got to adjust the tone to the reader, and of course to the subject. With general interest periodicals, and with newspapers(or with a publication where the editor thinks the reader is a dimwit), you have to identify everything. (Like this: Jasper Johns, the noted painter who long served as the company's artisitc director, said about the new work...) Length determines almost every aspect of an article, and I don't care at all what the length is;I just want to know it ahead of time. (I'd rather start over then radically adjust a piece once it is written.) Adapting to a word length is like adapting to a poetic form, loosely speaking: Writing a short piece is like packing a backpack for a trip to the moon. Longer pieces are an ocean voyage on the Queen Mary.(Very few pieces really need to be long.)Finally: All of a writers pieces are more alike than different, no matter where they are published, if the writer has a voice.

If they make a ballet out if it, what do you think they should call it? (Manhattnik, I can sense you casting this....)

Some of that contracted style is unique to Robert Swinston, I think. He has a certain Grahamesque quality that has always served Merce well. As to a more uniform company style, I'll think about it. Off the top of my head: Arms are choreographed very tightly in Merce's newer work, and independently from rest of body. I think arms used to be more ad hoc, say, in the seventies and eighties, for instance. (Not that they changed from night to night, but that the dancers might have had more determination in their original positioning--as in do what feels right with the arms.)That's killer choreography in Loose Time. Just so hard.

Yes, I am going. All performances. Please, someone else go too. Everyone else! And post, post, post! BTW, the dance on the cover of Dance Magazine July issue is being performed on both programs. It's pretty fabulous. Called Loosetime.(I saw it in Berkeley.) Okay, stop me. I have to get dressed and get to the theater....xxxfrom your Merceaholic alertnik.

A very minor point--the book's title is Holding on to the Air. It perhaps would be easier to locate with complete title....?If you do an author search, it is by Suzanne Farrell with Toni Bentley.

Another reason to see this article is for the interesting quote from Alexandra Tomalonis!